Off-Roaders Don’t Belong in Anza-Borrego Desert

Next month, when the state’s Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation commissioners come to town, they will be touring the latest additions to the Ocotillo Wells Off-Road Vehicle Park in eastern San Diego County. Using off-road vehicle registration fees, the state has recently more than doubled the size of the park, adding 20,000 acres to the existing 14,000.

But that doesn’t satisfy off-roaders. They also want access to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park next door, and the commissioners will be considering such a proposal at their March meeting in Borrego Springs. If approved, it would have to be ratified by the state Parks and Recreation Commission.

Under the proposal, groups of four to 20 riders of unlicensed vehicles would be allowed on 75 miles of roads in the eastern part of the park, although they would still be banned on the other 425 miles of Anza-Borrego roads. A designated member of each group would have to complete a desert-awareness program and each rider would have to agree in writing to stay on trails or pay a $250 fine. Group leaders would wear bright orange vests to make them easier for rangers to spot, and two more rangers would be hired with off-roaders’ registration fees.

Although the proposal is relatively modest, the encroachment on the fragile desert park should not be allowed.

Over and over again, off-roaders have demonstrated that dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles are more for sport than travel. People buy them primarily for the thrill of conquering tough terrain. The temptation to ignore the rules and stray from designated paths proves too great for too many. That’s why there’s Ocotillo Wells.

Anza-Borrego has a different purpose. The 426,000 acres of parkland were set aside to preserve and protect an area of outstanding natural beauty. People go to Anza-Borrego to camp or hike or explore, and to enjoy the exquisite desert quiet--activities incompatible with off-road vehicles.

The vehicles were banned from the park in 1987 because of the damage they were causing to plant and animal life and to archeologically sensitive sites when riders went off the trail. That damage heals slowly, if ever, in the desert.

Licensed four-wheel-drive vehicles and motorcycles are allowed on the park roads--often just dirt trails--and, admittedly, they, too, can cause damage if taken off road. But rangers say that rarely happens. Drivers tend to use them for transportation, not play.

The federal Bureau of Land Management, which has a fairly liberal policy on off-road vehicles--allowing casual use in many areas and competitive use on 500,000 acres in California--knows about the damage off-roaders can cause and how much it costs to police them. The bureau has had to more than double the number of its rangers, in large part because of the demands of policing off-roaders.

And recently, the bureau banned four races in the California desert because of the damage caused during the Barstow-to-Las Vegas race and the amount of staff it took to police the races and protect the endangered desert tortoise.

Off-roaders do not need Anza-Borrego. They have approximately 1 million acres of BLM and U.S. Forest Service land and 85,000 acres of state land, including the 34,000 acres at Ocotillo Wells to ride in. And Anza-Borrego and its 800,000 visitors each year don’t need off-roaders.